over my whole body, whipped the breath out of me. It was like seeing your father drunk or your mother in hysterics: that freefall in your stomach, cables snapping as the elevator gets ready to plummet hundreds of sheer stories, unstoppable, already gone.
“You cannot be serious,” Rafe said. He was on the edge of another fit of laughter.
“What the hell,” Abby inquired, very quietly, “did you think you were going to do with that?”
“Really,” Daniel said, giving the gun a faintly puzzled glance, “I’m not sure. I picked it up purely by instinct. Once we were out there, of course, it was much too dark and too chaotic to do anything sensible with it at all. It would have been dangerous.”
“Heaven forbid,” said Rafe.
“Would you have used it?” Abby demanded. She was staring at Daniel, her eyes huge, and holding the bowl like she was going to throw it.
“I’m not sure,” Daniel said. “I had some vague idea of threatening him with it to prevent him from escaping, but I suppose one never really knows what one is capable of until the situation presents itself.”
That click, in the dark lane.
“Oh God,” Justin whispered, a tremulous breath. “What a mess.”
“Not nearly as much of a mess as it could’ve been,” Rafe pointed out cheerfully. “Blood-and-guts-wise, that is.” He pulled off one of his shoes and shook a trickle of dirt and pebbles onto the floor. Not even Justin looked.
“Shut up,” Abby snapped. “You shut up. This isn’t a fucking joke. This is getting way out of hand. Daniel-”
“It’s all right, Abby,” Daniel said. “Really. Everything’s under control.”
Rafe collapsed back on the sofa and started to laugh again. There was a spiky, brittle edge to it, too near hysteria. “And you say this isn’t a fucking joke?” he asked Abby. “Under control. Is that really the phrase you want, Daniel? Would you really, really say that this situation is under control?”
“I already have,” Daniel said. His eyes on Rafe were watchful and very cold.
Abby slammed the bowl down on the table, popcorn scattering. “That’s bollocks. Rafe’s being a prick but he’s right, Daniel. This is not under control any more. Someone could have got killed. The three of you running around in the dark chasing some psycho arsonist-”
“And when we got back,” Daniel pointed out, “you were holding the poker.”
“That’s not the same thing at all. That was in case he came back; I didn’t go looking for trouble. And what if he had managed to get that thing off you? Then what?”
Any second now someone was going to say the word “gun.” As soon as Frank or Sam found out that Uncle Simon’s revolver had evolved from a quaint little heirloom into Daniel’s weapon of choice, we were into a whole new zone, one involving an Emergency Response Unit team on standby with bulletproof vests and rifles. The thought made my stomach twist. “Doesn’t anyone want to hear what I think?” I demanded, thumping the arm of my chair.
Abby whipped around and stared at me as if she had forgotten I was there. “Why not,” she said heavily, after a moment. “God.” She dropped down on the floor, among the shards of glass, and clasped her hands around the back of her neck.
“I think we definitely tell the cops,” I said. “This time they might actually get the guy. Before, they never had anything to go on, but now all they’ll have to do is find the one who looks like he’s been through a meat grinder.”
“In this place,” Rafe said, “that might not narrow it down very much.”
“Excellent point,” Daniel told me. “I hadn’t thought of that. It would also be useful in a preemptive capacity, in case this man decides to accuse us of assault-which I think is unlikely, but you never know. So we’re agreed? There’s not really much point in dragging the detectives out here at this hour, but we call them in the morning?”
Justin had gone back to cleaning my hand, but his face was drawn and closed. “Anything to get this over with,” he said tightly.
“I think you’re bloody insane,” Rafe said, “but then, I’ve thought that for a while now. And anyway, it doesn’t really matter what I think, does it? You’re going to do exactly what you want to, either way.”
Daniel ignored that. “Mackey or O’Neill?”
“Mackey,” Abby said, without looking up from the floor.
“Interesting,” Daniel said, finding his cigarettes. “My first instinct would have been O’Neill, especially as he’s the one who seems to have been exploring our relationship with Glenskehy, but you may be right. Does anyone have a light?”
“Can I make a suggestion?” Rafe asked sweetly. “When we’re having our little chats with your cop friends, it might be an idea to leave that out.” He nodded at the gun.
“Well, of course,” said Daniel absently. He was still looking around for a lighter; I found Abby’s, on the table beside me, and threw it to him. “It doesn’t actually come into the story at all, anyway; there’s no reason to mention it. I’ll put it away.”
“You do that,” Abby said tonelessly, to the floor. “And then we can all just pretend it never happened.”
Nobody answered. Justin finished cleaning my hands and wrapped Band-Aids around the split knuckles, carefully aligning the edges. Rafe swung his legs off the sofa, went into the kitchen and came back with a handful of wet paper towels, gave his nose a perfunctory scrub and tossed the towels into the fireplace. Abby didn’t move. Daniel smoked meditatively, blood drying on his cheek and his eyes focused on something in the middle distance.
The wind picked up, swirled in the eaves and sent a high wail down the chimney, banked around and came rushing through the sitting room like a long cold ghost train. Daniel put out his cigarette, went upstairs-footsteps overhead, a long scraping noise, a thump-and came back with a scarred, jagged-edged piece of wood, maybe part of an old headboard. Abby held it for him while he hammered it into place over the broken window, the hammer blows echoing harshly through the house and outwards into the night.
14
Frank got there fast, the next morning; I got the feeling he’d been waiting by the phone with his car keys in his hand since dawn, ready to leap into action the second we made the call. He brought Doherty with him, to sit in the kitchen and make sure no one eavesdropped while Frank took our statements, one by one, in the sitting room. Doherty looked fascinated; he couldn’t stop gawping, at the high ceilings, the patches of half-stripped wallpaper, the four of them in their spotless old-fashioned clothes, me. He shouldn’t even have been there. This was Sam’s line of investigation, plus Sam would have been out to the house like a shot if he’d had any idea that I’d been in a fight. Frank hadn’t told him. I was very glad I wasn’t going to be in the incident room when this one came out.
The others did beautifully. Their polished facade had gone up as soon as we heard tires on the drive, but it was a subtly different version from the one they used in college: less chilly, more engaging, a perfect balance between shocked victims and courteous hosts. Abby poured the tea and set out a carefully arranged plate of biscuits, Daniel brought an extra chair into the kitchen for Doherty; Rafe made self-deprecating jokes about his black eye. I was starting to get a taste of what the interviews must have been like, after Lexie died, and why they had driven Frank quite so far up the wall.
He started with me. “So,” he said, when the sitting-room door shut behind us and the voices in the kitchen faded to a pleasant, muffled blur. “You got to see some action at last.”
“And about time,” I said. I was pulling up straight chairs to the card table, but Frank shook his head and dropped onto the sofa, waved me to an armchair.
“Nah, let’s keep this cozy. You in one piece?”
“The nasty man’s face ruined my manicure, but I’ll survive.” I fished in the pocket of my combats and pulled out a crumpled handful of notebook pages. “I wrote it up last night, in bed. Before anything could go fuzzy.”
Frank sipped his tea and read, taking his time. “Good,” he said finally, pocketing the pages. “That’s nice and clear, or as clear as we’re going to get with that kind of chaos.” He put down his tea, found his own notebook and clicked his pen ready. “Could you ID the guy?”
